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Taylor: The More Things Change

Things have changed a lot since I was nine. That summer, my parents threw me a surprise birthday party. It was 1970, and my little league team — the Pearland (Texas) Elks — had two players named Larry and Moe.

Larry Biggers weighed at least 250 pounds and played first base. Moe Guidry wasn’t much bigger than a minnow. He played second.

I wasn’t a very good baseball player that summer. We still used the old wooden bats back then. Against a kid named Doug Campbell, my “Jack In The Box” wooden bat shattered into a million pieces when I fought off one of his pitches. Actually making contact, I gleefully ran to first base as if I’d just hit a home run in the World Series.

I had a lot of freckles in 1970. My hair was mostly brown and I had a crush on a girl down the street named Linda Favre (no, she’s not related to that Favre). Whenever I saw her at the ballpark, where she’d go to watch her older brother, I would melt like an ice cube in the Texas heat.

In addition to playing baseball, falling in love with Linda and that birthday party, I officially became the baseball fan I am to this day. Only, in 1970, I didn’t have 956 channels to comb through to find a game to watch. Our TV had knobs and there was no remote control.

Yet, 43 years ago I followed the game as closely as I do in 2013 with an iPad, Baseball-reference.com and, of course, the MLB Network.

Being 9 in 1970 wasn’t really that difficult. Oh sure, my brother and I had our tussles over the TV. Yep, even with four channels, we usually agreed to disagree. It’s what brothers do.

I followed my favorite team in 1970 via the radio and the newspaper. I’d stay up late at night, listening to the transistor radio my baseball-loving grandfather, Clarence Rodgers, had given to me when I was seven.

Each afternoon, I’d snatch the newspaper from the driveway and read every word of the Harry Shattuck’s game story in the Houston Chronicle. The 1970 Houston Astros were a tumultuous roller-coaster ride of emotion and I never missed a beat via that old radio or the afternoon paper.

Things aren’t quite the same in 2013. The Astros are once again bad, I have a lot of gray hair, and my kids play baseball with fancy aluminum bats that cost as much as what some cars did in 1970.

Then again, some things haven’t changed at all.

I still listen to games on the radio and I still read newspaper accounts of my favorite team.